Nude protest days are here again

Perusing reports of this month’s World Naked Bike Ride in San Francisco, I was impressed by the way the acres of sagging mottled flesh stayed ruthlessly on message: “RE-ELECT GORE” was the slogan on one man’s bottom, as fetchingly dimpled as a Palm Beach chad, while beneath the “GORE” of his butt his upper thighs proudly proclaimed “NO WAR” (left leg) “FOR OIL” (right). “I’D RATHER HAVE THIS BUSH FOR PRESIDENT” read one lady’s naked torso with an arrow pointing down to the presidential material in question. What a bleak comment on the bitter divisions in our society that even so all-American a tradition as nude bicycling down Main Street should now be so nakedly partisan. It’s as if the republic itself is now divided into a red buttock and a blue buttock permanently cleaved by the bicycle seat of war.

Steyn concludes on an optimistic note:

Those naked bicyclists are emblematic. The flesh is willing but the spirit is weak, too weak to articulate what ideas animate the party other than disrobed defeatistism. Was it a male or female bottom that said “WAR IS NOT THE ANSWER”? It seems more likely that this November the electorate will conclude, yet again, that the Democrats are not the answer.

JOHN can’t resist adding; The naked bicycle protests were actually a world-wide phenomenon; the idea was to promote energy efficiency. There don’t seem to be any “official” photographs of the Chicacgo protest, but the AP was on hand for the sunnier, warmer, and less politically charged naked bicycle ride that occurred in Madrid:

The cyclists are protesting the habitual traffic jams in the city, automobile polution and for better facilities for bike riders in a city where bicycle lanes are almost unheard of.